


they never tell you it's the fall ( that kills you )

by civilorange



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/F, I Don't Even Know, Sorry?, weird second first person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-11
Updated: 2015-07-11
Packaged: 2018-04-08 20:17:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4318536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/civilorange/pseuds/civilorange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After all, one of us is finally truthful enough to say it.</p><p>"I'm tired of loving you." You look tired; it isn't as dramatic as shadows under your eyes, or sluggish resentment in your limbs. It's the way you stare through me, the way you shrug your shoulders without comment, the slow blinks that say you hope for something other than what's in front of you when your eyes open.</p>
            </blockquote>





	they never tell you it's the fall ( that kills you )

It comes as a moment long after denial, but just before acceptance. After children's bedtimes, but before the moon starts dipping back toward the horizon. You're sitting more rigidly than ever, a stranger in your own home, a thick cut glass of something that’ll burn set out on the table like a soldier ready to die for a cause. This cause is the final nail in the coffin that it us—the eulogy at the funeral that will be our lives after this moment.

After all, one of us is finally truthful enough to say it.

"I'm tired of loving you." You look tired; it isn't as dramatic as shadows under your eyes, or sluggish resentment in your limbs. It's the way you stare through me, the way you shrug your shoulders without comment, the slow blinks that say you hope for something other than what's in front of you when your eyes open.

"Everyone says it's as easy to fall out of love as it is to fall into it," you obviously aren't looking for confirmation, on whether or not I'm tired too. You tease a fingertip around the rim of your glass, the salvaged crystal singing like nails down a chalkboard. "They don't tell you that you never stop falling—a bottomless pit is just as bad as a concrete floor. My bones may not be broken, and my heart might be without a bruise—but there's nothing there."

I sit gingerly on the edge of the table, our knees almost bumping, though we've settled to stare over each other's shoulders; I can't help but trace my eyes over the familiar lines of your shadow. The uneven tilt of your shoulders that would give you away to me nine-hundred ninety nine times out of a thousand. The long length of your neck, which you've always had a certain uncertainty about.

"I still love you, and sometimes I think it would be easier if I didn't." No one ever had loved me like you—wholly and completely, not underneath everything else you felt, but beside it. Even when you hated me, you had loved me. Your eyes had burned with it even as you’d bared your teeth in an uncharacteristic snarl—the calm rippling away under passion, the hate dissolving into love, the fear fading to comfort.

"It's the stupidest thing a person can do, right?" Like somehow if I agree, it will be alright. "Fall in love." You answer yourself with the heavy tongue of someone exhausted by the truth, because lies are so much lighter—they're weightless and buoyant. They don't sink to the bottom of your stomach like a stone, and choke the words before they tumble from a leaden tongue. I wish I felt anything now, but I'll be nothing without the lie. I've tethered everything I am to them, I can't speak for hopes that you'll turn around before you go through with this. It's another lie; pretending that I don't see the resolve in your face.

"They said it'd get easier, as if something like this gets easier." And that glass of sharp alcohol is downed like a statement; thrown back with the disregard you’ve grown into this last while. Nary a flinch to your features as you fully fall into the curve of my chair, ignoring the edges you always complained about.

"You said you'd never leave me again; and I'm a horrible person for wishing that you had." The words are stumbling like a toddler, tottering unsteadily over shivering lips and clicking teeth. "If you had left, everyone would understand anger, and spite, and hatred." Like those are better, less toxic, things to feel; but it isn't about the burn of poison in your blood, or the scars of struggle in your bones. It's about not being able to justify feeling. "But you stayed; and now I'm just tired."

So tired, but you keep speaking. 

"I love you, and I'll always love you, and no one tells you that's the problem with love." You're standing now, walking around the room blowing out candles until there is only shadow. A sharp exhale, and darkness slides in like a forgotten bedfellow. Sneaking across the floor, chasing your heels. But you're being truthful now, and you remember that the dark never scared you to begin with—I'd just needed to feel like you needed me, that when the light faded away my arms were where you'd find solace. You love me, you always will—but you're done pretending that you need me.

"It doesn't go away; even when the person's gone. It lingers," I don't get up to follow you, I remain in the dark. The lies have all dissolved now, and I can't exist in this world of acceptance you've stepped into. A place where love is a lingering tired thing, where the truth isn't a weapon—but a useless balm that takes the pain away for moments at a time.

They say a person dies twice. First their body; a tall proud stallion bursting through underbrush as if hellfire was on his heels, his rider half-dead, blood slick and constant down their side, war had finally taken what it had been after for so long. An arrow bobbed as the rider’s thin frame tumbled bonelessly from the saddle, landing face down in a collection of rain water. The storm raged, and the rider was unable to lift themselves, the black swallowing in from every corner. It would be a small dignity that the puddle will be gone with the rain—that when they find the rider, they will assume the wounds gained in war had killed them, not an inch and a half of muddy ground water.

That’s the first time. The second time comes decades later, and only a fistful of miles away; you’ve moved on in all the ways you are able, still loving me too much to accept the offered hands to you throughout the years. You have no children of your own—though that doesn’t make them any less _yours_ —and as they grow they stop asking for stories about me. They’re children of peace, and war only holds their attention for so long—usually in winter, when the trees are bare and the sky gray. Battle and sacrifice belong in winter; but come those first warm days of spring, you leave that turmoil behind to live in this present—one you’d learned to build alone.

My second death will be tied eternally to your first—I’ve remained behind your shoulder, because you’d accepted the truth too readily to belong to me anymore. But I’d promised to never leave you again, I promised that somehow I’d choose you—so when the spirit had asked me to move on, to slip into a new body, I refused. My people had peace, they prospered, there was no war; they didn’t need me, not like you did. So for the first time I was selfish—I chose me, because of you. You’ve aged well, but the marks are in every difference—white hair that had been blonde, wrinkled skin that had been smooth and untouched. But your smile—oh, _your smile_ —it hasn’t changed at all. It is still starlight and open skies, it is comfort and peace and contentment. It is everything I had denied myself foolishly for so long because I’d been proud, and stubborn, and foolish.

So when the generations of your family slip away for the night, prompted by your promise that you had another morning in you yet—they don’t seem to realize the linger in your kisses when you press lips against their foreheads, the way you trace your fingers across their cheeks and whisper goodnight. In the quiet dark, I finally find the courage to step from when I’d lingered in the dark behind you for decades; it only takes you a moment to see me, and while I’d always managed to brighten your beautiful blue eyes, this time they dim. You are closer to me than you have been in your whole life lived without me.

“Lexa.” My name was spoken every so often in the beginning, but as those who’d known me passed beyond the mortal coil, I became _heda_ and _the commander_ —in this sense, I am eternal, I could choose to stay until my legend no longer exists. But I choose to be Lexa now, I choose to let your voice be the last that allows me to linger. “You’re so young.” Its surprise—while you are over seven decades, I am still only twenty four summers. I will always be twenty four summers.

“You are as well.” I haven’t spoken since you cried at my pyre, I haven’t opened my lips—but even yet my voice doesn’t crack. You are surprised to look down, and away, at your mortal body—in this realm, beyond both life and death, you are young again. Golden curls and blistering blue eyes, soft in all the ways I hadn’t allowed myself, beautiful even in your sadness. “I love you.” I say it in the same way you’d told your grandchildren goodnight—lingering, because I knew I had to leave.

So I kiss you one last time—because I’ve been falling for decades, a bottomless pit I’d stepping willingly into with both eyes open and no hesitation in my step. Loving you let me live; I’d only had you in my arms for a few seasons, but it had been enough to change me eternally. I was the commander that stayed—lingered after death, and refused to live again. It was the only promise worth keeping.

They say you die twice—once when your body is laid to rest, and the second time decades later when your name is spoken for the last time.

You still have so much time until you join me—you are a person, more than a title—but I don’t mind waiting. 

**Author's Note:**

> / or / the one where lexa dies young, and waits for clarke forever.
> 
> Feel free to follow me on tumblr @ **civilorange**


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